Fusion PPT Reduces AWS Bill by 30% Using ParkMyCloud

Fusion PPT Reduces AWS Bill by 30% Using ParkMyCloud

The Challenge

Fusion PPT, an IT consulting and system integration firm headquartered in Vienna, VA, serves a worldwide client base. This means that they need to both stay up-to-speed on the latest IT trends and tools, while also keeping internal costs and maintenance time low so they can focus on their customers. The cloud allows Fusion the agility they need to support their customers and incorporate emerging ideas into their solutions.

Don Magrogan, CTO of Fusion PPT, said that the amount they were spending on Amazon Web Services (AWS) was starting to become a financial strain. In the past, the burden was on the developers to spin down instances when they were finished using them, which was often a secondary task when they were focused on core capabilities and client work.

Don looked into AWS Reserved Instances, but due to the fluctuations in Fusion PPT’s development cycle, it wasn’t financially practical to reserve the number of instances they needed at the peak of their development time.

The Solution

When Don saw ParkMyCloud, he knew it was the simple solution he’d been looking for to reduce cloud spend without eating away at developers’ precious time.

Don connected ParkMyCloud to his AWS account and set schedules to “turn off the lights” on their non-production instances at night and on weekends. Each project has a specific calendar schedule, depending on the team’s needs. When a project ends, they can use the “snooze” feature to stop instances for days or weeks at a time, until they need them again. They even have schedules on some production instances, used for file-sharing applications that are only needed during daytime hours.

With the team’s internal naming conventions for projects, they can currently apply parking schedules just by reading and identifying instances by name.

The Result

With ParkMyCloud, Fusion PPT has reduced its AWS bill by 25-35% (with the variation depending on the project cycle and usage). In the past, they would have been paying for that time when instances have been running, but not used. With ParkMyCloud, these instances can be automatically turned off to eliminate wasted spend.

Beyond parking instances, ParkMyCloud allowed Fusion PPT to identify an issue with a tool that had servers running in the background, which was supposed to have shutdown mechanisms installed. They hadn’t realized that there was an error and the servers were not shutting down on schedule. With ParkMyCloud’s single view of all AWS instances across regions and AWS accounts, they identified that problem and were able to add schedules to those instances.

ParkMyCloud affords Fusion PPT the flexibility to continue using on-demand EC2 instances, remain agile in support of their projects, and optimize their cloud spend in just a few minutes a month.

About Fusion PPT

Fusion PPT is an established leader in providing IT consulting and system integration services to federal organizations with challenging technology initiatives. As a privately held small business, Fusion PPT combines the best practices and expertise found at large consulting firms with a nimble, entrepreneurial and client-focused service team. Since their inception in 2009, Fusion PPT has contributed to the success of hundreds of IT projects, most spanning the globe in reach and impact. Their ability to perform and add value in complex, diverse and distributed environments has earned Fusion PPT a solid growth rate and a reputation as a trusted, capable and results-oriented service provider.